


You're Better Off Here

by prettyaveragewhiteshark



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Canon Universe, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Canonical Character Death, Non-Graphic Smut, Post-Canon, Sad Adora (She-Ra), Smut, Survivor Guilt, guest appearance by intrepid space explorer bow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 14:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30140649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyaveragewhiteshark/pseuds/prettyaveragewhiteshark
Summary: Set after the events of Season 5, with some changes to the canon plot line:The Princesses of Power managed to defeat Horde Prime, but at a great cost. After the battle, She-Ra left Etheria and vanished. Five years later, she finally comes back home to Bright Moon, where Queen Glimmer welcomes her with open arms. But the Adora who returned is not the same as the one who left, and Glimmer is torn between giving her friend the space to heal, and finding out - what really happened after She-Ra left?
Relationships: Adora & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	You're Better Off Here

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this fic, Queen Angella survived the events of Season 3 and lived to fight in the battle against Horde Prime. This fic involves some non-canon character death, but nothing is described in detail.

Glimmer didn’t believe it. She heard the cry go up at the gates through the windows of her meeting room, and she felt a shift in the air, a familiar presence that had been long lost these many years, and she saw the guards come in through the doors of the meeting hall with her name on their lips - “ _Queen Glimmer, it’s She-Ra, she’s returned.”_ \- but she didn’t believe it was true, didn’t believe her friend had really come home, until the guards parted and behind them stood a tall blonde woman with blue eyes and a tired smile. 

Adora. 

“ _Adora._ ”

Glimmer was running forward then, all of her queenly decorum forgotten as she charged through the double doors, catching Adora in a hug that nearly bowled the both of them over backwards. Adora hugged her back, and it took a moment for Glimmer’s stunned, overjoyed haze to fade enough to realize that Adora felt weak, a little frail, the strength of her grip around Glimmer’s back diminished from the raw force she’d used to have. Glimmer pulled back from the hug, happy tears in her eyes, and looked up at Adora, beaming. 

“I can’t believe you’re back.”

Adora smiled down at her. It didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Neither can I.”

Glimmer thought that perhaps Adora was just weary from her long journey, that after a few days of rest she’d be back to her old self. A week into Adora’s stay forced her to understand otherwise. Adora was a ghost drifting around the halls of Bright Moon. She attended meals, and took walks with Glimmer in the gardens when Glimmer wasn’t occupied with one meeting or another, but she was distant, as though only half of her had returned to Bright Moon, and the other half remained somewhere else, out there. Glimmer wanted to ask her where she had gone, why she had taken so long to return, but every time she tried, the deep, unfamiliar darkness in Adora’s eyes forced her to turn the subject to easier things.

Glimmer sent word to Bow that Adora had come back - he would want to know. He arrived at the palace three days later. When Glimmer met him at the doors, he told her he had come as quick as he could - his expedition into the next galaxy over could wait. He was eager to see Adora, nearly pushing past Glimmer at the door to find her, but Glimmer stopped him with a hand on his wrist. 

“She’s not the same Adora,” she murmured. 

Bow saw the meaning of that in her eyes, heard it in her voice. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, she hasn’t said, and I don’t know how to ask. Just...be careful with her.”

“I will,” he promised. 

They found Adora in the greenhouse, her fingers drifting lightly across petals as she gazed through the glass walls and out over the horizon, her eyes unfocused. She turned at the sound of their footsteps, and a smile spread across her face. 

“Bow,” she said, and she moved forward, meeting him in a long hug. 

“It’s so good to see you, Adora,” he said as he pulled back. He was smiling, but Glimmer could see the worry hovering behind his eyes, in the slight crease of his brow. Glimmer knew he could feel the weakness in her body, see the emptiness in her face. “How are you? How have you been?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” Adora said, the lightness in her voice not matching the hollowness of her presence. “Glimmer’s been nice enough to let me stay in Bright Moon for a while.”

“You’re welcome here for as long as you need,” Glimmer said, for what felt like the hundredth time in the last two weeks. She thought that maybe if she said it enough, Adora would feel permanent again, like she wasn’t going to drift into nothingness at any moment. 

Adora gave her a wan smile, then looked back to Bow. “How long are you here?”

“As long as I can be. I need to catch up with my long-lost friend.”

Bow stayed for a week. Glimmer leaned on his cheerful disposition to carry the moments when Adora seemed particularly distant, and they spent long hours listening to his tales of his most recent expeditions. But he was called away far too soon - a new discovery had been made on one of the nearby planets, and they needed his expertise right away. Glimmer could see the regret in his eyes as he told her, but she waved off his apologies. 

“It was good of you to come at all. You didn’t have to.”

“I did,” he insisted. “I still care about both of you.”

Glimmer’s heart ached. She smiled anyway. “You go. Explore those planets. We’ll be here when you come back.”

A month after Adora came to Bright Moon, late into a sleepless night, Glimmer found Adora standing on the western balcony, overlooking Bright Moon’s runestone. Her arms were spread wide on the railing, her head bowed, her shoulders trembling. Glimmer could hear the sounds of her sobs, and she paused at the door, unsure if she had any right to intrude. But she couldn’t leave Adora alone, so she said her name softly. Adora didn’t turn, but Glimmer heard her sniffling as if to hide her tears, watched as she hastily wiped her face against her shoulders. She didn’t turn, so Glimmer approached carefully. Adora flinched very slightly when Glimmer touched her shoulder, but she didn’t pull away. 

Adora was silent for a long moment. Her cheeks were still wet with tear streaks, and they glinted in the starlight. “I shouldn’t have come back,” she said finally, her voice thick. 

“What?” Glimmer said. “Adora, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t deserve to be here.”

“That’s nonsense. You are more than welcome at Bright Moon.”

“I don’t mean Bright Moon, I mean Etheria.” Adora’s voice was hard and shattered, like broken marble pieced together. 

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Adora, you saved Etheria. If anyone belongs here, it’s you.”

Adora’s jaw tightened, but she was silent. Her eyes flickered as she stared out toward the runestone, but Glimmer knew that she was seeing something else, that she was somewhere else. She suddenly felt desperate to bring Adora back, to have her here, right here, on this balcony, with her, so she reached up and touched Adora’s cheek and turned her face gently until their eyes met. 

“What happened to you, Adora?” Glimmer whispered, feeling ashamed that she could not keep her curiosity and confusion at bay any longer. “Where have you been?”

Something flickered in Adora’s eyes, something more present and real than anything Glimmer had seen there since she had arrived, and her expression shifted, and it looked like she was about to speak. But then she dropped her gaze, and she pulled Glimmer’s hand from her face carefully. 

“I’m tired,” she said softly. “Goodnight, Glimmer.”

The days passed and Glimmer was distracted. Adora’s face hung before her vision, the hardness, the brokenness, how empty and lost and distant she’d been on the balcony. Glimmer had to fix it. She couldn’t just stand by and watch Adora suffer like this. If Adora couldn’t see how valuable she was to Etheria, Glimmer would show her. She planned a royal tour across Etheria. She typically went on one every year anyway, this year’s would just be a little earlier than usual. She invited Adora along. Adora hesitated, but Glimmer took her hand carefully and told her it would be fun, it would get her mind off things, and Adora closed her fingers around Glimmer’s and agreed. 

Glimmer had told the other kingdoms that Adora was home again, and the word had spread quickly, so when Glimmer and Adora looked out the window as their airship docked there were crowds of cheering Etherians crying Adora’s name and waving banners emblazoned with the First Ones’ symbol of She-Ra. Adora’s eyes went wide when she saw them all, and Glimmer saw tears in her eyes. She took Adora’s hand, squeezing it softly. 

“Are you alright?”

“I’m-” Adora swallowed, and nodded, but she didn’t look at Glimmer. “I’m fine.”

“If you don’t want to go out there-” Glimmer tried, silently cursing herself for not considering whether Adora was ready for this. 

“I can do it,” Adora said. “I can.”

She stepped away a few paces, turning her back to Glimmer. She bowed her head a little, took a few deep, steadying breaths. Then she murmured something, and Glimmer heard “...Grayskull.” There was a flash of brilliant rainbow-tinted light, and then She-Ra stood there, magnificent and golden and glowing. Glimmer had to catch her breath. She-Ra turned and looked at her, and she held the sword at her side like it was something to hide. 

“I’m ready,” she said. 

City to city, land to land, they traveled. Everywhere they went, they were welcomed with open arms. Seahawk threw them a massive feast at Salineas. He looked well, Glimmer thought. The smile was returning to his eyes. Frosta stood at Glimmer’s height now - when Adora had left Etheria, she’d been twelve years old. Now she was almost an adult, and even Adora commented with a smile - “You’re much taller than I thought you’d ever get.” Frosta laughed, every inch the gracious monarch. “If you’re not careful, I’ll catch up to She-Ra one day.” Plumeria had prepared She-Ra a seat of honor in front of the runestone tree, where they had met Perfuma all those years ago. The runestone glowed, and the people danced long into the night. 

She-Ra was hailed by adoring crowds everywhere they went. Mothers kissed her hands, children hugged her waist, hardened warriors looked at her with something approaching reverence in their tear-washed eyes. “You saved my family, She-Ra,” they told her. “You saved us all.” Glimmer expected Adora to soften, expected her vitality and vibrance to return as she saw how all of Etheria loved her. But she didn’t. At the end of every day, Adora transformed back into herself and put away the glowing persona of She-Ra, and she seemed more shrunken, more dimmed than before.

Glimmer almost went to her once, one night. She approached her closed chamber aboard the ship as they traveled through the darkened sky. A dim light shone beneath the door. She got as far as the closed threshold, her hand hovering to knock, but she lost her nerve and could only press her forehead to the cool metal and close her eyes and think of a time when Adora had laughed as easily as she had smiled. Then shadows had moved beneath the door and Glimmer thought she heard footsteps and she left quickly. She heard the sound of the chamber opening behind her, but if Adora saw her retreat, she did not say her name. 

When they returned to Bright Moon, Adora locked herself in her chambers for three days. She didn’t emerge for meals, or for walks in the garden, or for stays in the library, of which she had grown fond before the royal tour. Glimmer was patient. Glimmer waited. Glimmer questioned the kitchen staff if Adora had been coming to the kitchens for food in the early or late hours of the night, but they all reported that they hadn’t seen her. 

On the third day, Glimmer stopped being patient. She went to Adora’s room, ordered the guards to unlock it, threw the doors open, and found that the room had been mutilated. She-Ra’s sword was embedded in the wall, and First Ones runes had been carved into the floors and walls, around the windows, on the ceiling near the taller shelves. Adora was asleep, curled up on the floor underneath a robe, using her arm as a pillow. 

Glimmer was not angry - the damage could be repaired with a few simple spells. The runes frightened her; they had been carved recklessly, the product of a clearly panicked mind, the owner of which lay in the ruins of her work, looking exhausted even as she slept. Glimmer stared up at the runes, trying to read them, trying to make sense of them. A year after Adora left Etheria, Glimmer ordered that all known First Ones books of study and language be collected and brought to her. She pored over them feverishly, absorbing as much of the information as she could, trying to understand She-Ra better, trying to understand her past and where she may have gone in case Glimmer ever needed to go after her. But the carvings were beyond her understanding, a part of the language so old, so deeply buried in a ruined past, that none of them had ever surfaced in any of the books she’d worked so hard to find. 

Adora stirred and looked up at Glimmer groggily, blinking slow as though she didn’t recognize her. “Glimmer,” she mumbled as comprehension dawned. “I’m sorry, I can fix it.”

“Adora, what is this?’ Glimmer said, trying to keep her voice steady. 

Adora climbed to her feet, her hair falling raggedly around her shoulders. “It’s nothing. I’ll pay to fix it.”

“I can fix it. I have magic,” Glimmer said. “What are they for?”

“Nothing,” Adora lied again. 

“Adora,” Glimmer snapped, the tight bundle of fear and worry and something else twisting tight in her chest, blending to make anger instead. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Adora stared at her, dark circles under her eyes giving her a haggard appearance. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Glimmer turned on her heel, and she saw a brief flash of surprised cross Adora’s face, but she didn’t leave the room. “Take up your posts down the hallway,” she told the guards, who bowed and complied as she closed the doors behind them. Then she turned back to Adora, who stood with a tight expression, who knew exactly what was coming. 

“Enough, Adora,” Glimmer said. “I need to know what’s going on. I have been patient, and I have been careful, and I have given you time and space and everything else you’ve needed. And now you’re starving yourself? You’re doing” - she gestured wildy to the runes- “God knows what with your sword. You can’t keep shutting me out.”

“Shutting you out,” Adora scoffed, and the sharpness of her tone slashed like a knife, but Glimmer didn’t flinch away. Good. Better than emptiness. Better than this unbearable silence. “I’m _protecting_ you, Queen Glimmer.”

“Protecting me? From what?”

“From the truth.”

“And what truth is that?”

Adora bared her teeth in what could barely pass for a smile. “I’ve already told you. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me, Adora.”

“No.”

The word cracked like a whip and burned like a wound. Glimmer blinked, drawn up short. She exhaled quickly. “Why? Why not?”

Adora’s jaw flexed and she looked away, shaking her head minutely. A surge of rage billowed up in Glimmer, and she tried to bite it back, but it was like vomit, like acid - it had to come out. She needed to purge it. 

“You are truly unbelievable, Adora, you know that?”

“Oh, am I?” Adora snarled. 

“Yes. You are. You have no _idea_ what it’s been like, waiting here for you all these years, all this time. Bow stayed around for _two years_ , Adora. Two years, turning down offer after offer for his brilliant mind, because he wanted to be here when you came home.” Adora looked away, her eyes glassy, her breathing shallow. Glimmer plowed forward, her blood pounding in her ears. “I sent search parties out for you, to every neighboring planet, looking for you, looking for She-Ra, just to make sure you were okay, that you were alive. And thank God for Entrapta’s reach, because we heard that you’d been seen on fringe planets, barely there, but it was something. It was enough. And I waited. I waited for you, for so long. I knew that you would keep your promise to come back. I knew you would, even when no one else did, even when all the other princesses gave up on you. ‘She’s gone, Glimmer. You have to stop living in a pipe dream.’ That’s what they told me, but I didn’t listen, because I believed you.

“And now you’re back, but it’s like you’re still out there. You might as well just be gone, because I can’t seem to get you to see me. I can’t seem to get you to be here. I thought that maybe showing you Etheria would help you remember just how much you mean to all of us. That it would make you happy to be back. But it didn’t. You just lock yourself away and you won’t talk to me and you act like I’m just some stupid kid who can’t grasp how great and grand you are. I’m the fucking Queen, Adora. I can wrap my head around things better than you think I can. All I want is for you to be here, because I waited so long and I missed you so much and it’s agony watching you suffer like this when I could help you if you would just _talk to me_.”

Glimmer was breathing hard and she blinked to clear the blurring in her vision and angrily brushed the tears from her cheeks. Adora was stiff, her mouth pressed in a hard line, her shoulders trembling just a little, her eyes trained on the closed doors behind Glimmer. 

“Adora, look at me,” Glimmer said, her voice thick and shaking.

Adora didn’t move. She didn’t look. 

“Look at me,” Glimmer said again, feeling something inside her starting to fracture, crumpling beneath the weight of these past weeks. 

Adora didn’t look, and the thing snapped, and Glimmer stormed forward and fisted her hands in Adora’s shirt and stepped her backward until her back hit the wall. 

“ _Look at me_.”

Then Adora looked. Glimmer’s aggression had shaken her out of her stupor and she looked into Glimmer’s eyes, shocked and angry and something else Glimmer couldn’t name. But she was here, fully here, her gaze hot and present and they were both breathing hard and Glimmer was angry, she was so angry, and there was nothing else she could do except lean up and kiss Adora hard. 

Adora kissed her back with a hard sound in her throat, her fingers lacing through the hair at the base of Glimmer’s neck, gripping her there. Her lips parted and her tongue swept into Glimmer’s mouth and Glimmer tilted her head to meet her, deepening the kiss. Adora wrapped an arm around Glimmer’s waist and turned both their bodies sharply, pressing Glimmer against the wall instead. The movement sent a thrill through Glimmer’s chest - there was Adora’s old strength, the fire Glimmer had come to know so well all those years ago. She bit Adora’s bottom lip, hard enough to bruise, and was rewarded by Adora’s heated gasp and growl as she kissed Glimmer again. 

Glimmer ripped Adora’s shirt off over her head, then leaned in to suck bruises against the skin of her neck. Adora panted, pushing Glimmer’s robe from her shoulders, unzipping the back of her dress. Glimmer shrugged it off, let it pool around her ankles. Adora’s fingers pressed against Glimmer’s back, the nails digging in a little. The pain was good, grounding, fueling the fury. Glimmer, hooked her fingers into Adora’s waistband and pulled her closer. Adora responded by stooping suddenly and lifting Glimmer by the backs of her legs. Glimmer wrapped her legs around Adora’s waist immediately, capturing her mouth in another kiss as Adora walked them to the bed. 

Adora laid Glimmer down in a fluid motion on the mattress, kneeling between Glimmer’s legs, then leaned down and started pressing open mouthed kisses to her throat. The movement of her body was fluid and rhythmic, completely maddening, and Glimmer felt her eyes rolling back, her hips lifting into Adora, trying fruitlessly to find the friction she desperately needed. Adora shifted skillfully, her lips not leaving Glimmer’s neck as she moved to lay on one side of Glimmer’s body. Glimmer almost complained, but she didn’t have the chance to before Adora’s hand slipped under the waistband of her underwear and her fingers slid against Glimmer’s center. 

“ _Oh,”_ Glimmer heard herself say, though the sound hardly counted as a word. “ _Fuck_.”

Adora lifted her head and looked at Glimmer and she was still present, completely present, and she didn’t seem so angry anymore. She kissed Glimmer deeply, and Glimmer made small sounds into her mouth, tiny, begging whimpers in cadence with the movement of Adora’s hand. When Glimmer had to pull away, gasping for breath, her eyes shut against the overwhelming sensation, Adora murmured into her ear, “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” is all Glimmer could manage, wrapping her arms around Adora’s neck, pulling her face back up to kiss her again, nearly crying out in the places where their lips parted. “Yes. Yes.”

Glimmer came as quietly as she could, her eyes rolling back in their sockets, her body trembling hard, Adora pulling her close, one hand on the back of her neck while the other helped her ride out the waves. The orgasm passed, and Glimmer shuddered and curled in on herself a little, panting in its wake. 

As the stars behind her eyes cleared, she leaned up and kissed Adora again, then reached down and fumbled a little at the fastenings of her pants before Adora caught her hands, stopping her. Glimmer looked up. 

“You don’t want me to?”

“I don’t need…” Adora fumbled a little herself, a flush coloring her cheeks. “Just your leg would be enough.”

Glimmer understood and she lay back, pulling Adora on top of her, interlinking their legs so her thigh pressed up between Adora’s. Adora moaned at the pressure, her eyes fluttering shut, her mouth falling open. Glimmer had never seen anything so beautiful, and she leaned up, kissing along Adora’s jaw as Adora ground her hips down in slow, even strokes against Glimmer’s thigh. Adora’s breath was hot against Glimmer’s ear as she panted. Glimmer touched her hips, reveling in the feeling of Adora moving so powerfully against her. 

“Glimmer,” Adora whispered, and her voice shook like a leaf in a storm. “Glimmer, I’m-”

She didn’t finish that sentence, and she buried her face in Glimmer’s neck as a long, desperate cry pulled out of her throat and spasms racked her body. She panted a steady string of quiet, incomprehensible curses, and Glimmer kissed her forehead until Adora finally collapsed, her muscles unwinding all at once. She lay there with her face against Glimmer’s throat for a long time as her breathing steadied and slowed. Glimmer just held her, and her anger was gone, and she had to take a few long, deep breaths to keep the tears from spilling from her eyes. 

“I missed you.”

Glimmer almost thought that she had said it at first, that the words had escaped her thoughts without her permission. But it was Adora’s voice, a little muffled against her skin, a little choked with emotion, but clearer than a bell.

“I missed you so fucking much I thought it would kill me,” Adora said, and kissed her throat. “It’s why I came back. I wasn’t going to. I thought I couldn’t face Etheria. But the thought of never seeing you again was worse. I wasn’t planning to stay long. I just wanted to see you again, one more time. Even if…” Her voice broke off, like a glass rod struck by a hammer. She pulled away from Glimmer, and a terrible cold filled in the places where they had been pressed together. Adora sat up against the wall and she stared across the room and the emptiness had begun to creep into her eyes. She seemed to know it; she closed them. “Even if you’ll never forgive me once I tell you where I’ve been.”

Glimmer looked at her for a long time, then rolled off the bed and crossed to where her dress lay pooled on the floor. She put it on, and picked up Adora’s shirt, moving back to the bed to hand it to her. Adora pulled it over her head, and Glimmer turned. “Zip me.”

Adora obeyed, her fingers brushing Glimmer’s skin as she pulled the zipper all the way up slowly and painstakingly, drawing the moment out as if to delay the inevitable. When she was done, Adora brushed the hair from the nape of Glimmer’s neck and kissed her there once, very softly. Glimmer suppressed a shiver, and turned, sitting on the mattress and leaning against one of the canopy poles. Adora sat back against the wall.

“Tell me,” Glimmer said. It was not a demand, and it was not a request. It was an opening of a door, an inviting in. 

Adora took a deep, deep breath, and spoke.

“After we defeated Horde Prime, I needed answers. I had been so careful, I was so sure I had all the tools and knowledge I needed to do everything right. But we barely won, and we lost so much in the process. With everything I knew of the First Ones, with all the potential we had found in their technology, I thought there could be answers out there, solutions for everything I had done wrong. I thought I could fix it.” Adora looked faraway, remembering. “I found bits and pieces on the planets close by, clues, breadcrumbs. I wished so much that I had brought you and Bow along.” She laughed bitterly. “I was never the brains of the operation.”

“You could have called for us,” Glimmer said quietly. “We would have been there in an instant.”

“I know,” Adora said. “That’s why I didn’t call. I didn’t want you to uproot your lives for me. My mission was something I had to do alone, because I was the one to blame in the first place.”

Glimmer wanted to protest, but she knew better. She let Adora speak. 

“So I kept looking, and with every new thing I learned about the First Ones, the more I believed that I really could fix it all. That I could turn back time somehow, save everyone. Save Mermista, and Perfuma. Save Catra. Save Queen Angella.” Adora’s eyes were glassy, and Glimmer felt a surge of fresh agony. How many times had Adora reopened that wound on her heart? How many times, in the throes of her guilt, had she forced herself to relive those moments of grief? “I found a First Ones ruin on the fringes of the galaxy. It was ancient, but I felt I was on the verge of something. I had translated enough runes to know that there was something about time, something about going back. I was wrong.” Adora’s voice caught, flesh on a nail, something tearing. 

“I found their time machine. But it wasn’t made for going back. It wasn’t made for undoing what had been done. Instead, I got to watch every iteration of our battle. I got to watch as I saved Etheria, and everyone in it. I got to watch all of my mistakes undone. I saw what could have been, if I had done it right. I saw every flaw of my plan in full detail, and how each wrong step led to the deaths of our friends. Of your mother.”

“Adora…” Glimmer whispered, but if Adora could hear her, she didn’t let on. 

“I memorized it. I spent months memorizing every iteration, until I could see them so clearly in my dreams it was like living through them. The times I woke up in the dark, I thought I had actually done it, that I had fixed everything. But then I realized that I was still alive, and I realized just how hard I failed. How perfectly I had done everything wrong.” Adora turned her head and fixed Glimmer with a look so clear, so piercing, Glimmer thought she could feel Adora’s shattered soul in her own chest. “Glimmer, it’s my fault your mother is dead. I could have done it right, I could have saved her. I could have saved everyone, and I didn’t.”

Adora looked away again, and tears streaked down her cheeks. She gestured helplessly to the ruined floor and walls. “After I saw Etheria again, after I remembered everything we’d lost, after I saw those kingdoms and saw Perfuma and Mermista missing from them-” (“I’m so sorry,” Glimmer whispered) “-I thought I would try again. Just in case. Just in case I had missed something. I carved all the runes I knew, all the runes that meant time, and mistakes, and righting wrongs. I carved them as She-Ra, just in case she knew something, in case she could show me something I had missed.” Adora’s face stilled, and then split, her teeth baring themselves. “She didn’t.”

Adora fell quiet, and she looked drained, hollowed out, but not like she had been before. She seemed empty and relieved. The truth was out in the open now, her great sin laid bare, her confession complete. She looked as though she expected Glimmer to take a knife to her throat. She looked as though she would have died with gratitude on her lips. 

Glimmer felt her chest trembling with a great weight. The thought of another reality, another truth, one where her friends had survived that great final battle, one where she still had a mother, pressed down, suffocating in its presence. She closed her eyes, and breathed it in. Down the hall, her mother strode like a force of nature, her expression severe, her wings streaming behind her like glittering comet tails. Halfway across the world, Seahawk twined his fingers with Mermista as they sat on twin thrones, surveying the sparkling breadth of Salineas. In Plumeria, Perfuma threw back her head and laughed, her voice bright and lively and shining like stars. 

Glimmer inhaled, bringing in the grief like a friend. She opened her eyes. Adora was watching her, eyes calm and clear, waiting for the axe to fall. Waiting, no doubt, for Glimmer to rage against her, to cast her out, to exile her from Bright Hope and Etheria for the rest of eternity for the crimes she had committed. 

“It would have killed you instead,” Glimmer said. 

Adora blinked in slow acknowledgement. “Yes.”

Glimmer exhaled, long and slow, and moved to Adora, kneeling beside her on the mattress. Adora looked up at her, unafraid, ready to die, ready for eternal loneliness, whichever came first. Glimmer kissed her forehead gently, and pulled back and held Adora’s shocked face in her hands. 

“What you saw was a lie, Adora. A beautiful one, but a lie all the same. If my mother taught me anything, it’s that there’s no going back, no matter how much we think we could change.” Adora tried to shake her head, opened her mouth to speak, but Glimmer tightened her grip ever so slightly, quieting her. “Listen to me. We all knew the risk we were taking that day. We were all ready to die for it. To die for Etheria. To end Horde Prime.

“Adora, if I had come with you, I guarantee I would have seen a hundred new iterations of that day, a hundred ways I could have saved everyone except for myself. This is not your burden.” Glimmer smiled at the grief and tears welled and spilled over and dropped onto Adora’s lap where they fell. “I miss them all terribly, too. I miss them every day. That grief does not belong to you. You don’t get to take credit. You don’t get to bear it alone. You have suffered enough. You have been away for so long. You get to come home now, Adora.”

Grief etched itself across Adora’s face, a tumbling, trembling grief that knotted her brows and twisted the shape of her mouth and made her teeth show. She bent her head and pressed it to Glimmer’s chest. Glimmer folded her up, and laid back against the mattress, and together they both cried. They cried for what they had lost, in the battle for Etheria, in the yawning space between home and the black fringes of the galaxy. They cried for mothers and friends and lost love, for everything that was, and everything that was not. And when the tears ran out, they breathed, exhausted in the dark, and fell asleep tangled in each other. 

When the sun rose over Bright Moon, it found Queen Glimmer and She-Ra of the First Ones slumbering beneath the quilt one of them had thrown across their bodies in the night. Glimmer woke first, and watched as Adora slept, her eyes unmoving beneath their lids, her breaths slow and even. She tucked a stray strand of hair away from her face carefully. Her chest ached with the thought of Adora, so far away all those years, drowning in her guilt, trying everything in her power to undo all that had been done. She wondered if, when she woke, her eyes would go back to that distant, empty planet, in all of its loneliness, in all of its impossible visions, if she would drift again like smoke on the wind, shivering as though a single breath could snuff her from existence. 

Adora opened her eyes, inhaling a slow, waking breath. She blinked, and looked up. Her eyes were blue. Glimmer had almost forgotten their color, missed it in all the faraway darkness, but they were brighter than the seas of Salineas, deep and inviting. There was the distance too, the emptiness, ever-pulling. 

But Adora looked at her, and said “Glimmer,” and she held on tight. 


End file.
